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Archive for March 5th, 2009

Superior Court Judge Cinda Fox is wheeled out of the courtroom after being attacked by David Paradiso. Fox was reported to be in good condition.

FRESNO, Calif. — A man accused of killing his girlfriend was shot to death in a Stockton courtroom Wednesday after he attacked the judge presiding over his murder trial, an official said.

David Paradiso was shot after he left the witness stand and began attacking San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Cinda Fox during a break in proceedings, said Karen McConnell, a county spokeswoman. Read the rest of this entry »

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A Connecticut woman mauled by a chimpanzee two weeks ago lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids and may be blind and suffering brain damage, and hospital officials say it’s still unclear if her condition can improve at all.

The Cleveland Clinic, revealing the specific injuries Wednesday for the first time, told The Associated Press in a statement that 55-year-old Charla Nash also lost the bone structure in her face when she was attacked on Feb. 16 in Stamford, Conn. Read the rest of this entry »

CHICAGO — A federal judge on Wednesday found the city’s top police official in contempt of court for refusing to turn over lists of officers who have repeated complaints filed against them by the public.U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman ordered Superintendent Jody Weis to produce the lists by Monday. Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city’s law department, said if Weis doesn’t hand them over by then, sanctions might be imposed.

Gettleman initially ordered Weis to turn over the information by Feb. 19. Instead, Weis sent a statement one day after the deadline saying the lists would diminish morale and harm some members of the police force by branding them as “repeaters.” Read the rest of this entry »

Octomom Hypocrisy

Just when you think the “Octomom” story has run out of tentacles, some new revelation jolts it back into the headlines. Last week, in an exquisite combination of smut and gossip, porn producer Vivid Entertainment offered Nadya Suleman, the infamous mother of newborn octuplets, up to a million dollars to star in an X-rated film.Read the rest of this entry »

In the past few months, we’ve been riveted and disgusted by the exploits of scamsters like Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford (characters who, if they didn’t exist, would have to be invented by Tom Wolfe). It’s both easy and convenient to hold them up as the ultimate symbols of the just-ended boom. But we shouldn’t. While there was some crime in the mortgage industry, law-abiding, respectable, upstanding citizens caused the overwhelming majority of financial losses suffered thus far. Skeezy money managers and mobbed-up boiler rooms didn’t create the economic catastrophe. It was visited on us by firms in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500—companies that trace their origins back to the 1800s, run by graduates of Yale and Harvard. The people who blew up the system weren’t anarchists. They were members of the club: central bankers and private-equity honchos, hedge-fund geniuses and Ph.D. economists, CEOs and investment bankers. And the (overwhelmingly legal) con they perpetuated on themselves, their colleagues, their shareholders and creditors, and, ultimately, on us taxpayers makes Madoff’s sins look like child’s play. Read the rest of this entry »